How to organize development and production apps for distribution

We highly recommend to create independent apps in HockeyApp for your development and production versions for the App Store or Google Play. This way you can use independent bundle identifiers and both apps can run in parallel on the same device.

HockeyApp offers four pre-defined release types:

alpha

beta

enterprise

store

Apps with the release type alpha, beta, or enterprise can be distributed through HockeyApp, i.e. they have a download page and users can install them directly on the device. Apps with the release type store are intended for distribution through the App Store or Google Play and can not be downloaded from HockeyApp. You can also distribute your HockeyApp integrated application independently with 3rd party distribution services such as Apple's Mobile Device Management (MDM) if you would like, but HockeyApp does not include any MDM integration.

The HockeyApp SDK also checks for the existence of a provisioning profile in the App bundle to detect the AppStore environment and then automatically disables all beta only features of HockeyApp. (i.e. "In-App-Updates" in the iOS SDK (for Beta & Enterprise only) are automatically disabled when running in an App Store build by default, but must be automatically removed in the Android SDK for store/production builds.)

Custom Release Types

You can define a custom release type that is shown instead of default release type on the dashboard, download page, and native apps:

Click on your app on the dashboard

Click on Manage App

Enter a short string into the field Custom Release Type. Use letters and numbers only.

Save your changes

Apps with the Same Bundle Identifier / Package Name

The first app with any bundle identifier or package name can be created by dragging the binary file (.ipa / .apk / .app.zip) onto the dashboard. Any further build with this bundle identifier or package name will be assigned to the same app. If you want to create multiple apps with the same bundle identifier or package name, please follow these steps:

Click on the button New App on the dashboard

Click on the link "manually"

Select your platform and release type

Fill-in the title of the app

Fill-in the the bundle identifier or package name

Save the form

To upload a build for this app, open the app page first, then drag & drop the build to this page. If you use HockeyApp for Mac, select the right app in the dropdown App name.